Author's Notes:
Dear Loyal and Sweet Readers,
I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to each and every one of you for taking a year to update this story. In 2016, I was caught up in writing a new original novella for publication, several fests, and then everything just stopped. I had a tragic personal loss that just...it blew a hole through my middle and left me devastated. It's taken me since to really get up any will to write. I did submit small pieces (when inspiration struck and energy was high) to this year's HP Kinkfest on Livejournal and to Hawthorn & Vine's fest on dramione dot org, but everything else just fell away. I am so very sorry for disappointing many of you by dragging this story out so long, leaving it on a cliffhanger.
Your kind and sweet prodding to continue & finish this tale (and others) in reviews has rejuvenated some of my flagging spirits recently, however. So, I'm going to try very hard to finish this story and some of my others this year. "Eros" is almost done anyway. I hope this chapter signals my commitment to fixing the wrongs and finishing what I started.
I just want to say THANK YOU for your constant, loyal, and loving support. Your generous encouragement is everything.
XOXO,
- RZZMG
P.S. Thank you once more to my amazing beta, "ladysashi", who is unfailingly there for me and whose mad editing skills made this chapter shine. Love you, dahling!
P.S.S. And now...on with the show!
CHAPTER TWELVE: Revelations – Part III
(real date and time unknown)
Tracey had been standing next to him one minute, her hand in his and a smile upon her pretty lips, and the next, she was hunched over, hand over her nose, blood pouring profusely from between her fingers onto the stone floor by their feet.
Thinking quickly, Harry applied pressure to her torso and neck to bend her the other way, so her head was tilted towards the sky instead, to help minimize the flow. He'd had his share of bloodied noses over the years, first from Dudley's fists, later in Quidditch, and so he knew just what to do.
"Don't panic," he told her. "Tilting your head back stops‒"
Her upper body convulsed again and up came more of the stuff, shooting like a small fountain into the sky and causing her to choke as some of it didn't quite make it and slid back down into her throat. The front of her pretty dress was ruined as she tipped forward again and coughed up a mouthful of blood onto his shoes.
"Shit!" He summoned a towel with a quick thought and pressed it to her mouth and nose.
Across the way, Malfoy was swearing, too, and a moment later, Ron, Seamus, and Nott all followed suit.
Glancing over, Harry saw all the women in the room were similarly stricken with the same bizarre malady. Hermione was coughing up blood as if she had something lodged firmly in her lungs and was struggling to get it up. Lavender's hands were covering her bloodied ears and she was shouting the word, "stop" over and over again. Parkinson was gripping the area over her bellybutton and gasping as if suffering a massive cramp and under her hands, a rapidly expanding dark stain—blood—spread fast through the purple silk of her dress. Greengrass had blood-stained fingers covering her eyes and was moaning in pain.
He turned back to Tracey, whose grip on his arm had become painful in her panic. She looked at him over the edge of the towel with blatant fear. In her gaze, however, he could also see her faith in him to make this right, much as he'd seen in the eyes of Dumbledore over the years.
Yet, just as with the old wizard, Harry hadn't a clue as to what it was he was supposed to do. What in Godric's name was going on?
Tracey's body gave another spasm and bubbles of frothy blood appeared at her nostrils, splattering her cheeks as they popped. Water, a strange, gentle voice whispered in his ear and nudged him in the direction of the nearby loo.
Y-yeah, s-she needs water, Harry thought, feeling shaky and uncertain, appreciative for the guidance.
Almost as if he was being guided by an invisible hand, he took Tracey's elbow and guided his girlfriend towards the women's, swiftly herding her inside. Her blood was a brilliant scarlet against the white ceramic and chrome accents of the sink as she bent over it coughing and spitting.
Unsure what more he could do to make things right, Harry rubbed a soothing hand over his girlfriend's back, moving in circles as Mrs. Weasley had done for him that time he'd been unwell at her house after stuffing himself to the gills on Easter dinner. "I'm here. I won't leave you," he kept murmuring to her, knowing it was little consolation as Tracey's thin frame was wracked with shivers.
Thankfully, after a minute or so, the seizures seemed to taper off.
"I…I'm okay," Tracey finally told him around a choked sob, her bizarre affliction seeming to subside as suddenly as it had come on.
With tears in her eyes, his girl rinsed out her mouth and splashed her face with fresh water from the tap.
"What was that?" she asked, leaning over the sink, arms shaking, face dripping wet. "Harry, what just happened?"
"I'm not sure," he admitted. "I didn't see anyone cast a spell. Maybe…maybe it was something in the food?"
Even as he said it, Harry knew that explanation was a weak one. If the edibles had been poisoned, everyone would have gotten sick, especially Ron, who had been gorging himself at the table earlier, as he'd eaten at least one of everything offered. Yet, only the girls had been affected by the weird illness.
So much blood, like what happened to Ginny, he thought, as he watched the drain swirling with water dyed pink.
Someone was definitely toying with them.
The darkness inside Harry rose up once more, and he could feel it itching to get out, to unleash a little blood of its own.
Tracey made another distressed sound and sniffled, and that anchored Harry back to her side in a flash, however, all other thoughts shunted out of the way in favour of assuring her safety and care. "I'm here, honey," he reminded her again. "I've got you."
"I know," she told him with a tremulous smile, and he could see she was trying for brave. Terror lurked in the back of her pretty hazel eyes, though. She leaned into him. "I'm scared, Harry, but...you're here with me, so I know everything will be okay."
His heart skipped around in his chest.
Tracey's undaunted faith in him made Harry both proud and terrified. Never in his life had he been the recipient of such trust, and quite frankly, he was afraid of failing it—of failing her. Like, ever.
Her hands shook violently as she cleaned her face and attempted to dab out the blood stains on her dress with the cloth he'd provided her. Harry aided her as best he could while tucking her body into his, but mostly, he just felt useless…helpless, really. His frustration at being stuck inside this blasted room—no, horcrux was what Hermione had called it—was pecking at his last nerve.
The truth was, he'd adopted a bit of claustrophobia from his years being locked inside the cupboard at the Dursley's, and although the walls here in their fake Room of Requirement were wide and the ceiling quite tall, it really hit home just then that this wasn't the real Come-and-Go Room, and there was no walking out at any time. They were all trapped inside some kind of freak, magical prison.
A cage, that same soft voice hissed through his mind.
The idea made his skin crawl as badly as the thought of having his magic collared. Sure, a True Wizarding Name had sounded cool at first, but Harry was now beginning to wonder about it, and just how true it was that the power it held over a witch or wizard was ever really undone.
Following that thought, once again he wondered why Dumbledore had not included him in that particular tradition, and why it was no one had thought to use a T.W.N. against that bastard, Voldemort, when they'd had the chance. Perhaps if they had, his parents would still be alive and Sirius wouldn't have suffered so in Azkaban.
Why couldn't life have been different?
"It's the cards," Tracey said in a soft, frightened voice, distracting him from his inner brooding once more. "They're playing with us, aren't they? This is their way of punishing us all for figuring them out, isn't it?"
Harry thought back on what Hermione had shown him when she'd turned Greengrass' card around.
The first must play to win, or all are cursed to lose.
That's what the card had said.
But first what, exactly? He wondered. First born in tonight's group? He hadn't been, that had been Hermione. First to be the youngest Seeker in Hogwarts history? That had been his grandfather, according to Tracey, who'd read his ancestor's Quidditch plaque. First to fail Potions in his year because the professor hated his everlasting guts. Well, yes, maybe that...
Still, it couldn't be anything that simple, he decided. That card meant something specific when it talked about a 'first', obviously. Had it been as Hermione and the others were interpreting it, though, or did it mean something entirely different that no one had thought of yet?
He started counting down the ways he might be 'the first', and came out a big, fat zilch.
He hadn't been the first to have been sorted into a House among the group, as alphabetically by last name, that had been Lavender. He hadn't been the first to have cast a spell, as that had most likely been Hermione, nor the first to have flown a broom, as he knew from Malfoy's bragging that his rival had been born not just with a silver spoon in his mouth, but a top-of-the-line Firebolt as well. He hadn't been the first to own a familiar, as Ron had been given Scabbers months before Harry had met Hedwig, and he hadn't been the first to get his wand at Ollivanders, but among one of the last in their class, he knew.
So what first was the sodding card talking about?
First to kill.
Harry shivered as the voice in his head whispered its answer.
That...yes, he was quite sure, that meant him. No one else he knew was responsible for someone else's death, not accidentally or on purpose.
But Harry, he'd done both.
Dumbledore had sat Harry down earlier that year and, at long last, had explained what he knew of Tom Riddle, who had called himself the 'Dark Lord Voldemort'. He had told Harry the truth of his scar, too, and of how his mother, Lily, had sacrificed her life to spare her only child's. Her love had saved Harry, even as it had doomed her and her killer both.
In a way, he'd been responsible for his mother's death.
Inadvertently, that same spell had also given Harry a second chance to even the score later, when Tom Riddle had once more appeared before him, first as a malevolent spirit possessing Professor Quirrell and later as a phantom spirit hidden away inside a diary. Due to his mother's magic lingering within his soul, Harry had been able to defeat the darkest wizard of their times a second, and then a third time—the former by accidentally touching him and igniting Lily Evans' protection magic, but the later...Harry had chosen to commit that murder by stabbing Diary-Tom, who had been mostly corporeal by then, back to hell with a Basilisk fang. His mother's protective magic had slowed the deadly venom running through his veins then, allowing him the chance to destroy their enemy.
Now he wondered: if he'd been collared by a T.W.N. since childhood, would it have suppressed his mother's lingering magic as well, preventing him from defeating Tom? Was that why Dumbledore had sent him to live with Muggles, rather than among wizards, who knew of the tradition of reining in children's magic—to prevent anyone from leashing him?
Had Dumbledore suspected the Dark Lord had not died when he'd been a baby?
Yes, that same, gentle voice whispered to him.
He quickly glanced around, looking for the origin of the speaker, thinking she sounded vaguely familiar—a voice from the darkest vaults of his mind that he could almost, but not quite, recognise—but he could see no other woman in the room right then but Tracey.
"Who–?" he began to ask, but his girlfriend suddenly swayed against him.
"I still don't feel very well," she told him, leaning heavily against him for support. "I think I need to lie down."
Just before her knees gave out, Harry's body moved on its own, catching her and cradling her to him. "Gotcha," he told her, and bending his knees, swung her up and into his arms bridal style. "I'll take you to our room."
Heading out of the loo and back into the main room, he saw the other couples were still there, and that the strange illness had also subsided for each of the other women.
Greengrass was lying down on a white couch that was streaked with her blood, Nott kneeling beside her and soothing her in low tones.
Seamus had a sobbing Lavender in his arms, her face pressed to his chest, his shirt ruined from her blood and tears.
Ron was sitting on the floor with his partner lying across his lap, her face buried into the lee of his shoulder. He was rocking Parkinson back and forth, a haunted expression on his face.
And 'Mione… Malfoy had her up and in his arms, their pose mirroring Harry's and Tracey's.
Harry shared a look with Slytherin's Captain, and there was a moment when they were, for once, in perfect accord. Fury and a dark desire for revenge against their unseen assailant radiated from them both. It seemed their mysterious host had pushed them both too far in attacking their ladies.
Crossing the room, Harry took a seat on an unoccupied sofa, carefully juggling Tracey in his arms and then readjusting her on his lap. She laid her head on his shoulder with a sigh.
"Thank you."
"Anything for you, honey," he promised her.
Glancing over at Malfoy, Harry noted the guy was inspecting the white ceiling far above them. A look that promised violence darkened his expression quite suddenly. "You interfered, you sodding bastard!" he snarled, and it was obvious he was speaking to Eros, the malevolent entity that was, no doubt, watching them and listening to their every word even then. "You cheated!"
In the blink of an eye, a plan formed in Harry's head as to how they could use Eros' cruel meddling to their advantage this time.
"I agree with Slytherin's Captain," he quickly added, speaking loudly enough for the whole room to hear and then some. "Everything has to go through the deck and in its right order, as was pointed out earlier. Eros blatantly acted without a card to coerce players into quitting this time. He broke the rules. Now we'll never know who might have properly won the game."
"That's right‒!" Hermione started to say, then stopped and began squirming in Malfoy's arms, demanding he set her back on her feet, clearly upset. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Draco, I'm fine. Let me down," she demanded.
Malfoy, however, refused to comply, tightening his hold on her and readjusting her in his arms. "You were coughing up fountains of blood not five minutes ago," the man archly pointed out to her.
Hermione glared at her partner. "I'm not now, am I? Whatever it was, it's passed, as you can see."
Still, her partner seemed unconvinced. His frown grew more pronounced, as if he intended on arguing the point.
"Need I remind you that I am a fully capable witch who can adequately cast non-verbal spells," Hermione reminded him rather firmly, "and I'm wearing spiked heels."
She let the threat hang in the air between them.
Harry couldn't help but grin at the clash of wills between his best friend and Malfoy as they stared each other down at that. At least that was one relationship he wouldn't have to worry about, it seemed, as Hermione had never been one to take it in the teeth without giving back just as hard. Slytherin's Prince, he predicted, was in for a very lively future, should he decide to pursue something there, once the game ended.
If it ended.
Bloody hell, how were they going to get out of this mess, if Eros didn't reply to the allegations against him?
Apparently swayed by Hermione's argument, and quite possibly a little afraid of her threat, too (and rightly so, Harry thought), Malfoy did as his partner bade and set Hermione down. Still, he hovered over her protectively, sliding an arm around her waist and keeping her anchored close to him, Harry noted.
His approval of the guy shot up twenty points.
Of course, he'd never tell 'Mione that, because she'd shoot him for being a chauvinist. He wouldn't be telling Malfoy that, either, but for a completely different reason.
"As both team Captains have made the same call, it's now an official ruling," his best friend informed them all once she was back on her own two feet. She cleared her throat, which was rough from the vomiting she'd just been doing. "The game's been unfairly rigged, and the rules of fair competition typically call for results to be invalidated when there is proof of outside manipulation or attempts to engineer outcomes. Therefore, the contest should be considered a draw."
Malfoy barked a cynical laugh. "Fancy that, Eros, you dodgy bastard. It's over! You lost on a technicality!" he proclaimed, tossing a dark smile into Eros' teeth, wherever he was lurking. Harry thought it a rather fitting sentiment, and aped the expression, feeling a surge of hope in his chest as his accomplice demanded in his most imperious voice, "Now open the bloody door and let us out!"
A long silence followed that command.
As the seconds ticked by and nothing more happened, Harry's exultation over getting a leg up began to fade, and he wondered if, perhaps, like some bad cliché in a suspense thriller, they'd cut the wrong wire. Rather than deactivating the bomb, had they instead sent it on an accelerated countdown to 'self-destruct'?
"Don't think he's buying it, mate," Nott said from his position on the floor next to the sofa.
Yeah, Harry was just thinking the same thing, actually. Using the regulations of any game against someone only worked when they were playing from a place of fairness and their power was able to be checked. That much he knew from Quidditch. Unfortunately, neither of those conditions was true in this case. They were literally at Eros' mercy here, and 'fair' was whatever the tosser deemed.
Against him, Tracey tightened her hold around his neck, the lack of response from their 'host' clearly making her nervous. "He's not letting us out, is he?" she whispered, looking over his shoulder at the area where the door should have appeared. "Harry, what if he never does?"
"He has to," he automatically replied, trying to keep her calm and bolster her confidence, even though inside he was thinking along the same gloomy lines. "He can't keep us in here forever."
"No, he can't," Malfoy told them. He looked less confident than earlier, but there was still a snake's cunning in his gaze, telling Harry he knew more than he was letting on. "I've read the same book on dark magic as Granger has, and Owle Bullock stated explicitly that a horcrux was nothing more than a receptacle for a part of a soul, to keep it safe from outside harm. That doesn't mean it feeds that piece of the soul, though. It doesn't sustain it. It's just a type of safe-house for it."
"Feed it?" Ron chimed in, coming out of his stupor. "Like it'll starve or something?"
Hermione snapped her fingers, obviously catching on to what her partner was saying. "You're right. Souls only have a finite amount of energy in them. According to Adalbert Waffling, who codified the Fundamental Laws of Magic and wrote the book Magical Theory, which is widely considered the most scientifically-based and important book in magical history–"
"I only have so many years left of my youth, Granger," Pansy groused from her spot in Ron's lap, apparently knowing Hermione's penchant for long-winded lecturing. "Can we skip the lesson and get to it sometime this century?"
Harry wisely repressed the grin that threatened to spout across his face at that, knowing his best friend would hex him a new opening somewhere unnatural if she caught him agreeing with Parkinson.
Hermione scowled at Slytherin's Queen. "As I was saying, Waffling's First Fundamental Law of Magic—that is, 'Tamper with the deepest mysteries, the source of life, the essence of self, only if prepared for consequences of the most extreme and dangerous kind'—is something you'll recall they teach first years in History of Magic class. If you'd done the homework in that class properly–" Harry cringed at the gentle censure in her tone and the look in her eye that she cast Ron's way, thankful it wasn't aimed at him just then, too. "–you'd remember there's a rather lengthy section on the properties of souls and how they are a fuel source for magical spell casting. You'd also remember Waffling had stated very clearly that, from the moment you're born, you start using up your soul's energy. Everything you do in your life, including casting spells, drains that energy slowly over time. When it's fully depleted, that's when you die."
"So?" Nott challenged her. "What's that to do with starving?"
"A horcrux is a soul divided," Malfoy pointed out, tossing his friend a disapproving glance for the tone he'd taken with Hermione. "It's energy is half the original. Once it burns through that, it'll cease to be. End of the line."
As if they were of one mind, the idea clicked for the whole group at once. Victorious grins and hope-filled gazes were exchanged.
"So, we wait it out," Seamus said. "We wait 'til Eros is drained, yeah? Then, we stroll out th' door without a 'by yer leave'."
That sounded like a mint plan, as far as Harry was concerned.
"Perhaps," Hermione said in a tone that absolutely ruined everyone's happy all at once. She was staring at the deck with a frown upon her face and rubbing her fingertips together, as if she was contemplating a whole new idea that could, quite possibly, throw a wrench in the whole works. She also had that look on her face, too, the one that said whatever that big brain of hers was churning around and around, it was going to spell nothing but trouble for all of them. "What if...theoretically, Eros' soul could get recharged?"
"Like a battery, you mean," Tracey asked, wiggling in Harry's lap and making him acutely aware of how good she felt in his arms, and of the scent of their sex, which still clung to her skin. "But what would he use for a new energy source?"
The moment his girlfriend asked the question, a sense of dread unlike any he'd ever known filled Harry's heart, and the knowledge of why they were trapped inside the horcrux suddenly came to him.
"Us," he said. "We're his food."
Everyone was silent as that horror sank in.
Harry glanced over at Malfoy as another urgent thought cascaded through his brain and headed straight for his mouth, full speed ahead. "You said the game had been played before, by others. What happened to them?"
His Slytherin rival seemed floored for the first time, as if he was just beginning to put pieces together in his own head with what he knew of the game and the woman he'd gotten it from originally. "I don't know," the blond admitted, and hurried over to the box that had housed the four card decks. "A list...I thought I remembered a list somewhere in the paperwork. Didn't really think it was important."
Hermione hurried to his side and together they flipped through the tiny rules booklet. When they reached the last page, Malfoy threw it down onto the table in frustration and disgust.
"It's not here," he snarled.
On a whim, Hermione picked up the box lid and turned it over. "Found it, on the inside cover." She squinted and brought it closer to her face. "Really tiny writing, though."
She passed it off to Malfoy, who read it. The first name on the list caused him to let out a rather serpentine hissing noise and jerk back. "Lucian Bole? That bastard played, too? Why would Madame Aset trust that fucker with the cards?"
At that, Nott jumped up and rushed over to confirm the name. Harry thought the man's reaction odd, and wondered as he looked between Nott and Greengrass, who exchanged a significant glance, what their connection was to this Lucian Bole, and why Malfoy didn't like the guy.
"Wait, when?" Nott asked.
"March, 1994," Malfoy growled, "right before‒"
He stopped cold, leaving his thought unfinished, but his cheeks had gone bright red and his mouth became a hard line across his sharp features.
Next to him, Theodore Nott blanched, his face going as white as a ghost's.
"Right before what?" Harry asked, suspicious.
"Before he got his hands dirty raping little boys," Zabini said from his doorway, his tone filled with ice. With a click, the door to his private room shut behind him and he came into the main room, barefoot, wearing the same robe as before. "She's asleep," he told Hermione, who'd opened her mouth to obviously ask how Ginny was. "Fine for now. I'm keeping an ear out."
"Raping...?"
Harry turned his attention back to Nott, whose voice sounded raw, like he'd been sucking down the lemons like they were going out of season. The guy seemed green around the gills as he looked over at Zabini. "Is that why‒?" he asked, but couldn't seem to give voice to rest of what he was thinking, as if it was too painful to speak aloud.
Zabini's expression softened. "Theo..."
"Is it?" Nott demanded of his friend, sounding anguished.
Some silent conversation happened between the two men then, some Slytherin version of Morse code using only eyes and facial expressions. It was all very mysterious, but Harry caught the gist and felt a wave of compassion pass through him. The only thing he couldn't parse out of the unspoken revelation what which of the two of them, Nott or Zabini, had been one of Bole's victims. Either that, or they knew someone who had been.
"No one's to blame, but Bole," Zabini told his housemate. "I'm going to tear him a new one when I see him next."
But the damage was done.
"Oh, Merlin," Nott whispered, absolutely horrified by whatever truth he'd uncovered in the conversation, and cupping a hand over his mouth, he hurried for the bathroom. Pounding through the swinging door, he made for the line of sinks against the far wall. A second later, the sounds of his vomiting up his shoes echoed loudly through the entire suite.
Greengrass hurried after her partner, disappearing behind the door to the men's loo with a swish of fabric, on silent feet.
No one spoke.
Zabini sighed and hung his head.
This is why, the voice in Harry's head told him, and he knew what it meant: this was why he had to stop Eros.
The first must play to win, or all were cursed to lose...and in this group, he was the first to have ever taken a life, so he had to be the one to figure out how to kill Eros. None of his friends would be able to live with how it felt to snuff out another's existence, for they were too good of heart, but for Harry, it would be just one more sin on his already tarnished soul.
He could live with that, especially if it saved the people he loved.
Predictably, it was a loud-mouthed Parkinson who filled the awkward silence after Nott's departure.
"Would someone like to tell the rest of us what the bloody hell is going on?" she demanded, crawling from Ron's lap to get to her feet again. Just as quickly, Ron was standing beside her, arm around her waist, assuring she was supported, just in case. "Why does that fucknut, Bole, matter to anyone here?"
But Zabini did not reply, his eyes cast down to the floor in shame. Ditto for Malfoy.
"Sod this," Parkinson spat. "I'll get my own answers." She moved quickly to Draco's side and grabbed the box lid from his hand. Then, she began reading down the list of names and dates. "Lucian Bole, 1994. Misogynist bully, as I recall. Marcus Flint, 1990. Fucking sadist, everyone remembers. Selwyn...something. I can't read the last name. A nobody, obviously. 1986. Gilderoy Lockhart, 1982. Tosser extraordinaire. Peter Pettigrew, 1978..."
"Wait!" Harry cried out, jolted by the name.
Quickly, he readjusted Tracey, so she was lying comfortably back on the sofa. He even tucked a pillow against her, too, just to give her something extra to hold onto, if she wanted. Then, he stood up and went over to the group, asking Parkinson to hand him the box lid.
"Let me see that."
Reluctantly, the witch did as requested, and Harry turned it around to read the list.
Peter Pettigrew, 1978.
The man who had betrayed his father and mother to their deaths had played "Eros and Psyche" during his final year at Hogwarts—had even been the one to rent the game from that Madam Aset character, personally, it seemed.
And then, he'd gone bad. Really, traitorously bad.
Lockhart and Flint had both been arseholes, too. And although Harry didn't know this Selwyn character and didn't remember Lucian Bole, still it couldn't be coincidence that several of the names on the list were people who'd gone psycho later, could it?
Hermione stood at his shoulder and was reading down the list as well. "Rodolphus Lestrange. Cantankerous Nott. This thing reads like a 'who's who' of dark wizards." She leaned in closer. "Howard P. Lovecraft?" she asked, sounding incredulous. She turned to Malfoy. "But you said he was almost a fourth year when he left Britain!"
"And quite mad," the man confirmed. "From what I understand."
"Maybe it was because of the game," Lavender chimed in.
Ron snorted. "I thought you had to be of age to play."
"My thoughts exactly," Hermione replied. "Apparently not. Clearly, someone was passing this game around to students here at Hogwarts, some of whom were underage."
"Flint would have only been a fourth year, too," Parkinson added. "And Bole. Both pure-blood and old enough for that chauvinistic 'coming of age' bullshite that most pure-bloods follow, so that's probably how they knew Madame Aset. They probably went to her to teach them how to shag, and later borrowed the game from her to play with witches their own age."
Ron growled. "Not all of us pure-bloods do that kind of thing, you know. Go to a sex-witch, I mean." He folded his arms and raised his chin, acting defensive. "I certainly never did."
His partner reached up and pinched his cheek fondly. "Which is another reason why you're perfect."
Harry's best friend turned an interesting shade of magenta.
Malfoy opened his mouth to reply, but Hermione pointed a warning finger in his face. "I know what you're going to say, Draco, and just don't." She lowered her hand and gave her partner a small peck on the cheek to soothe his ego. "I'm counting your nice points, you know. If they're more than your 'naughty' points by the time we get out of here, I'll reward you appropriately."
Slytherin's Captain looked down at his partner and seemed to weigh that offer carefully. "Will the reward be sufficiently naughty?"
"Of course."
"Then I'll abstain from delivering the rather clever, but spine-ripping insult that was guaranteed to flay your friend alive, Granger," he agreed. "But I do expect a really nice naughty gift later for showing such amazing restraint."
Hermione gave Malfoy a smirk worthy of a Slytherin at that, and Harry visibly cringed at the irrevocable influence his school rival had laid upon his best girlfriend in such a short time. That damnable, smug expression she was wearing was a carbon-copy of Malfoy's own. The fecking thing was going to haunt Harry's nightmares for the rest of his days.
He turned back to the list of former "Eros and Psyche" players to take his mind off their sickening sexual banter...and that's when he saw it. The one name he'd dreaded finding on the list.
Tom Riddle, 1942.
"Harry..."
Having returned to perusing the list as well, Hermione had, apparently, found the name at the same time as he did.
"Yeah," Harry acknowledged. "I see it."
Malfoy leaned over Harry's shoulder. "See what?"
Numbly, Harry gave the box lid back to Hermione. Things were beginning to take shape in his mind, details that both confounded and terrified him: Tom Riddle had played "Eros and Psyche", too, back during his fourth year. A year later, Moaning Myrtle had died, according to the timeline Harry had been told by Dumbledore. That meant Riddle had gone looking for the Chamber of Secrets and had come up with the plan of releasing the Basilisk after having played the game.
And then Tom had made his diary soon after Myrtle's death...
"Tell me again how horcruxes are made," he asked his best friend.
Hermione stared at him as if she knew where he was going with the question. Her lips pursed into a hard line, as if speaking of it was somehow difficult for her.
"You commit murder," Malfoy replied, when Hermione would not. "That splits your soul. You then capture the murdered person's soul and that split piece of your own soul, and you stuff them both into a magically charmed vessel of some sort, which then becomes known as a 'horcrux'."
"So...what happens to the soul of the murdered person? It's locked in there with a maniac forever?" Ron asked.
"It gets turned into a battery to sustain the murderer's piece of soul," Harry reiterated. He turned to Hermione and Ron. "It's what Tom Riddle was doing with his diary—luring unsuspecting people in, so he could siphon off their soul's energies. Then, he found one person he could suck completely dry, intending to take over her body once her soul had completely fed his own and totally re-energized it."
"You mean, he was feeding on Ginny," Zabini said, and his expression was one of such naked rage, that Harry feared the man was on the verge of losing his control and losing the plot. "Like some kind of...energy vampire?"
Harry glanced at him in surprise. "She told you?"
Zabini gave him a curt nod. The man looked one thread shy of completely unraveling and unleashing hell right then.
"And that's what Eros is doing to us now, isn't he?" Lavender asked. "He's using our souls to keep his own from burning out."
Not alone, the voice in Harry's head told him, and that gave him pause.
Who was this woman in his head? Was it someone else trapped in here with them?
Yes. A cage!
"I don't think it's only Eros' soul he's keeping alive in here," he told the others, his intuition guiding him down a new path none of them had considered thus far.
"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, setting the lid of the box aside on the table. "Harry, do you know something we don't about the deck?"
He struggled to put all his tumbled thoughts into words, just as he had earlier when talking to Malfoy and Zabini about it. He could discern the facts, but not make them into some coherent pattern that could be easily interpreted. "What I know...it's not about the deck itself as a bunch of cards, but about it being a horcrux. Specifically, I've been feeling some strange presence guiding me in certain directions all night. Not in a bad way, though, like the cards have done to us. It's not manipulative. More like...it's a gentle nudge of encouragement, you know? And just recently, it's come with a voice. She's in my head. She's...telling me things. But she's weak, I can tell."
"She?"
Malfoy looked at him through narrowed, suspicious eyes.
"Harry, hearing voices‒" Hermione began to warn him, but he cut her off.
"Yeah, I know. You've said before it's not a good thing."
Ron made his way over to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "But if you hadn't heard things back in second year, we never would have found the Chamber of Secrets, and Ginny would be dead. So, maybe it's not all loony, ya know? Maybe...it's a good thing this time, too."
Zabini crossed his massive arms, looking skeptical. "And why would you be the only one to hear this mysterious stranger, Potter?"
Harry shrugged. "Because I don't have a True Wizarding Name. I'm not blocked in any way. Maybe that's why she can get through to me."
Yes, the voice reiterated, even as Hermione, Ron, Seamus, Lavender, and Pansy gasped in shock and awe at Harry's revelation.
"But that shouldn't matter, as we're all of age now," Malfoy reminded them. "The power of the T.W.N. broke upon our seventeenth birthdays, which is why the Ministry's restriction on underage magic no longer holds any power over us. So, technically, none of us are blocked right now, either."
Harry held up a hand, expecting this argument. "But the difference is I've never been, whereas all of you have. Not just once, but twice. Besides, how do you know the T.W.N.'s power is completely broken? Because the Ministry said so?" He scoffed. "After everything they did to try to disgrace Sirius Black and to cover up the attacks around the school in first and second year, do you really trust the Ministry not to have lied about something like that?"
Ron snapped his fingers and turned, pointing at Parkinson. "That must be why your T.W.N. still worked against you even though you're eighteen! The magic isn't fully gone!"
Parkinson did not look pleased that Ron had just announced such a thing aloud. Her mouth flattened, she arched a brow, and she put her hands on her hips to indicate her disapproval. His best friend seemed to realise his catastrophic mistake a moment later, and dropped his hand, looking sheepish.
"Er, sorry, love...but it's true. Shouldn't have worked, right? But it did."
That made Parkinson pause for consideration, and her expression shifted with worry. "He's right. Ron shouldn't have been able to command me with my T.W.N. if the magic had broken, like the Ministry professes...but he did." When she realised everyone was looking at her with concern, she waved them all off. "With my total permission, of course," she amended quickly.
Seamus whistled. "Ye've a lot of stones, darlin'. Sharin' tha' kind o' power is dangerous."
"Especially since we're under all observation," Hermione reminded them, and pointed up towards the ceiling.
Behind him, Tracey let out a horrified gasp. "Oh, god, Harry!"
And suddenly he remembered that Tracey had said her T.W.N. aloud to him not two rounds ago.
Nearby Zabini started swearing up a storm, too.
At his side, Ron hung his head. "FUCK!" his best friend hissed.
"You have got to be fucking joking," Malfoy said, looking around at the others. "You actually shared something that important in a place like this? For a game?" He threw his hands up into the air and grit his teeth.
"Nice," Hermione reminded her partner, who clamped his teeth shut and seethed like a dragon in silence at the stupidity of his friends. She sighed. "Well, we're going to need to reconvene in here and discuss this. Immediately. We need to know how much Eros now knows about us, and anything strange that's happened tonight that he might exploit."
Grumbling under his breath about certain Slytherins behaving like idiotic Hufflepuffs, Malfoy stormed off for the men's loo to retrieve Nott and Greengrass.
Zabini turned and looked to his private room, but seemed torn between involving his ill partner and keeping her ignorant for safety's sake.
"I think Ginny needs to be in on this, too," Hermione gently told the big Slytherin. "What's happening to her right now...it could be similar."
"It feels like what Diary-Tom did to her," Harry agreed once Zabini was off to retrieve Ginny. "Except with blood."
Hermione and Ron both concurred.
"Then we're definitely dealing with a horcrux situation," Lavender said, coming into their circle with Seamus at her back. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her to him as if he was afraid of letting go. She relaxed into him, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, like she was made to be there. "There's definitely a psychotic soul in here with us."
"Yeah," Ron agreed, holding a hand out to Parkinson to guide her close as well, "and it's using us as food."
Slytherin's Queen slipped her hand into her partner's and let him pull her into the safety of their group.
"I want to know what Eros' ultimate goal is," Hermione said, glancing back towards the loo, where Malfoy had gone. Her expression was one of fear, not for herself, Harry knew, but for her partner, who had been acting erratic all night. "And how long do we have to figure it out before we're consumed?"
Harry shook his head, catching Tracey's gaze across the room, feeling the need to have her nearby as well. "I just want to know how we escape before then...because I'm not letting any of you die in here. No matter what."
The first must play to win, or all are cursed to lose, the voice in his head reminded him once more, haunting his thoughts.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author's Notes:
'Revelations', indeed! What did you think of this chapter's newest spin(s)? Leave me a review, if you would be so kind, and let me know!
Already working on the next chappie, FYI.
XOXO,
- RZZMG
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Musical selection for this chapter: "Fear of the Dark" by Iron Maiden, offered by user "GrimyBee" (chapter is dedicated to you!). Lyrics are as follows...
I am a man who walks alone,
And when I'm walking a dark road
At night or strolling through the park.
When the light begins to change,
I sometimes feel a little strange.
A little anxious when it's dark.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark...
I have a constant fear that something's always near.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark...
I have a phobia that someone's always there.
Have you run your fingers down the wall,
And have you felt your neck skin crawl
When you're searching for the light?
Sometimes when you're scared to take a look
At the corner of the room,
You've sensed that something's watching you.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark...
I have a constant fear that something's always near.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark...
I have a phobia that someone's always there.
Have you ever been alone at night,
Thought you heard footsteps behind,
And turned around and no-one's there?
And as you quicken up your pace,
You find it hard to look again...
Because you're sure there's someone there.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark...
I have a constant fear that something's always near.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark...
I have a phobia that someone's always there.
Watching horror films the night before,
Debating witches and folklore,
The unknown troubles on your mind...
Maybe your mind is playing tricks.
You sense, and suddenly eyes fix
On dancing shadows from behind.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark...
I have a constant fear that something's always near.
Fear of the dark, fear of the dark...
I have a phobia that someone's always there.
When I'm walking a dark road,
I am a man who walks alone.